Wow. Just got back from the last opera of the season (not that we have seasons here in Miami, because we don't), La Boheme. This is something that will stick with me forever. it was some of the most beautiful singing and music I have ever heard. The story itself was, as its reputation has echoed, infantile, but some of the lyrics were very beautiful. It was very moving, pure passion. Just didn't have an actual plot to speak of. But there were moments when I was so moved that I don't think I breathed for minutes at a time. this was the first opera I ever attended where I didn't fall asleep midway. 

Just finished watching the special nightline edition called backlash which exposed the growing hatred and demonstrations against America in Iraq and other Middle Eastern countries. Wow. A quote: “and even those who were once admirers of American values now find themselves filled with rage.” I would tend to agree. What exactly are “American values now that we have shown that we don't have those values? The men who invaded America by stealing our presidency are showing the entire world that they do not have the same American values that most of us here do have.

A journalist there said that “now we have seen the real America, the ugly face of America that we have feared. People now are referring to America as the new Rome, bush the new Caesar and everyone is now supposed to be frightened of him, as his obedient servants...”

it showed how Egypt who receives more than two-billion dollars a year from America in aid/payoff money, second only to Israel in the region, their streets have been filled with hundreds of thousands of very intense anti-American demonstrations over the last six months. They are protesting because they don't want their president to take the money from Bush anymore. They hate America and what it represents now. This wasn't always the case. But lest we forget this is not America. This is George Bush and the war-mongers that talked him into this. America still has somewhere underneath all the lies and bs a good heart and good values. But the rest of the world is now judging us on our government’s actions. The American people, although they took to the streets more than any other time in our history to defend these values, were not successful in stopping these atrocities and the perpetuation of this government’s deceptive war and profit machine. 

Another quote, from Egyptian leading scholar Dr. Kamul Abul Maght. “The good United States that we used to know and like has been suddenly hijacked, by a highly organized minority, launching a war that is not Americas war. But very few here understand this.”